1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system and to a printing assistance apparatus and method, e.g., management of operation steps in the manufacture of a printed product ordered through a printing order system that receives a request to manufacture printed material from a customer.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the fields related to the manufacture of printed products, to cope with the complexity and diversity of printing operations, manufacturing apparatuses used in the manufacture of printed products, such as printing devices and processing devices, are becoming complex and diverse. This makes it difficult for workers to fully comprehend all of the contents of operations for printed products. In particular, in post-processing steps where printed sheets undergo printing and processing in various printing devices and processing devices, a direction in which a stack of sheets is set varies with each printing device and processing device. Therefore, practice is required in setting a stack of sheets in a correct direction.
There is a printing service called web-to-print in which a printing order from a client is received on the web, followed by the manufacture and delivery of a printed product. In web-to-print, clients order a wide variety of types of printed products, and therefore a large number of types of printed products are handled in small lots. This makes it even harder for workers to fully comprehend all of the methods for producing the printed products. To address the foregoing issue, manufacturing operations, such as printing steps and processing steps, are preset as operation steps per printed product, and a written operation instruction describing such operation steps is generated.
Workers need to set sheets in a correct direction, at their own discretion, on the basis of the processing specifications of a printed product obtained from the written operation instruction (a printing orientation, a processing position, etc.) and the specifications of manufacturing apparatuses acknowledged by the workers.
However, as the decisions are left to the workers, there is a risk of losing printed sheets in the case where a wrong setting direction is used by mistake in manufacturing apparatuses, such as printing devices and processing devices. Furthermore, when there is a plurality of manufacturing apparatuses, experience is required to acknowledge and accurately determine a setting direction in each manufacturing apparatus.
There is a conventional technique to assist in operations in post-processing steps as disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-236322. The technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-236322 first identifies, from a stack of sheets, an area that a customer cannot see in a final printed product as a result of carrying out predetermined post-processing (trimming and binding) designated by a print job. Here, the area that the customer cannot see is, for example, a fragment that is detached as a result of trimming, i.e., a bleed, or an end face to which a cover is attached in binding. Such an area that is lost or an area in which written information cannot be seen as a result of post-processing will hereinafter be referred to as an area that becomes invisible. Next, instruction information related to the post-processing steps is added to the area that becomes invisible, e.g., “bleed” is printed in a portion that will be trimmed off as a result of trimming; in this way, an instruction about the post-processing steps can be issued appropriately without damaging the appearance of a final printed product.
Meanwhile, in the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-301742, first of all, device dependence information that is provided per device, such as a processing device, connected to a manufacturing apparatus is managed as a template. By combining a template and a print job, a written operation instruction can be generated in consideration of post-processing steps. For example, a description can be provided in a written operation instruction so as not to trim output material that exceeds the capability of a trimming device in terms of thickness in the trimming device. It is also possible to illustrate a sheet setting direction by attaching an image of the actual printed material to a written operation instruction.
According to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-236322, for example, in the case of trimming, workers can be assisted in post-processing steps by providing an area that becomes invisible with information indicating a bleed. However, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-236322 does not provide a mechanism for managing the placement specifications per manufacturing apparatus, e.g., correspondence between the orientation in which a stack of sheets is set in a manufacturing apparatus and an area to which processing is applied on the sheets. Therefore, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-236322, although it is possible to add the orientation in which printed material targeted for post-processing is set in a post-processing apparatus currently used to an area of the printed material that becomes invisible based on the placement specifications of the post-processing apparatus, upon switching to a post-processing apparatus with different placement specifications, workers can no longer be informed of a correct orientation in which a stack of sheets is set if an instruction for printing in the area that becomes invisible is left unchanged.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-301742 makes it possible to generate a written operation instruction in consideration of post-processing steps from device dependence information and a print job related to the post-processing steps. However, it does not provide a mechanism for managing the placement specifications per manufacturing apparatus, similarly to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-236322. Therefore, upon switching to a post-processing apparatus with different placement specifications in the post-processing steps, workers cannot be informed of a correct orientation in which a stack of sheets is set.